I’m interested in the different perspectives—one very corporate and one very personal—that Nakarmura and Kirkland take that together reveal an inherent contradiction in identity construction in digital spaces. In critiquing the difference-less utopia (dystopia?) promised by the likes of Compac and IBM, Nakamura reveals the problems associated with “gesturing towards a democracy founded upon disembodiment and uncontaminated by physical differences” (16). Her criticism is founded the corporate/capitalist nature of such ideology, an ideology with a very real interest in erasing difference to reduce the market to as homogeneous a level as possible.
Kirkland, on the other hand, shares the case of Raymond, who creates an identity in which difference is in opposition to Raymond himself rather than in relation to anyone else. Raymond takes (at least temporary) solace in the ability to be differently gendered in a online environment; tech companies promise we’ll find happiness in an online environment in which difference doesn’t exist. Both seem promising and problematic: Is either a more accurate descriptor of what digital spaces offer?
While Nakamura, Kirkland, and Ow all focus on aspects of digital identity that merit attention, I do find it useful to consider the very concept of virtual reality a little more carefully. How seriously should we take the identities people can create—or have created for them (or uncreated?)—in online spaces? This question came to the fore for me in Kirkland’s piece when he claims that on Facebook, Aja “inherited the strength to struggle, to carry her through the silent tempests of patriarchy” (15) and that she can be in “’more than one place at once,’ … reveal[ing] the complexity of space in the digital dimension” (16).
Granted, Kirkland is citing research from another of his studies, but without the data to substantiate these claims, I was left wondering just what was she doing online? What constituted being in these different spaces? Does being plugged in, logged in, and available online count as being in this third space, or does some sort of activity have to be occurring? What, then, is this activity that makes the virtual so live, so real, as Kirkland suggests? It’s not so much that I discount the possibility as I felt shortchanged in the depth of his analysis.
Nakamura critiques the utopian ideology in the rhetoric of technology corporations. I see Kirkland falling prey to overindulgent claims about the power of such digital spaces, though his claims are certainly of a different nature. To frame the issue differently, as intriguing as Ow’s multi-faceted critique of a racist, sexist, violent video game is, part of the argument is based on the fear that, in its ability to seem more like life than other media, it becomes more than offensive (which it is). It becomes a vehicle for creating people who think the way the video game does, and perhaps who start acting in that way as well. Although Ow doesn’t go as far as to suggest this, isn’t that the thinking behind Kirkland’s inability to “deny the impact of the digital dimension to the expansion of pedagogical space and the intensification of human activities” (19)?
That said, I do find Kirkland’s idea of a hybrid notion of official space and unofficial space quite useful. As online spaces become more “real”—connections richer and more complex, interfaces less and less virtual—and as the technologies that support them become more portable and more ubiquitous, looking for the ways in which these spaces inform each other seems more useful in continuing to discuss how different they are.
FilkBlog: The Scott Filkins Experience 
Insightful response to all three pieces, and you do a great job of bringing the articles in conversation with one another! Kirkland tends to valorize online spaces and to stress their possibilities whereas Ow and Nakamura are primarily engaged in critique. Very different kinds of research going on here!
I also wondered about Kirkland’s discussion of Aja’s story, not only because it was unclear what exactly she was doing (Facebook in class, maybe?), but also because–without knowing what was happening–it was hard to understand how her activities were better because they were digital. Could she have gotten the same benefit of escaping class by doodling? Writing notes? Daydreaming? I’m intrigued by the idea of escape or “zoning out” that happens in digital spaces–ways to feel temporarily disembodied, even though such disembodiment is virtual rather than actual. I just wish Kirkland had explored that more fully in his discussion of extra spaces.
I think you’re right in that efforts to see how online and offline spaces inform one another are of vital importance, maybe more important than parsing out exactly what digital spaces do that real spaces don’t.